ATandT, Apple Working to Improve iPhone Experience

AT&T has given Apple pointers on improving the iPhone's wireless network performance, reports the Wall Street Journal, and with competition expected from a rumored Verizon Wireless iPhone, the carrier's working harder than ever to improve its network and customers' morale.

In efforts to fortify its network, improve service and better please customers,
AT&T executives made several visits to Apple designers, helping them to
better understand and streamline the way the iPhone interacts with AT&T's
wireless network, the Wall Street Journal
reported March 31.

AT&T CTO John Donovan told the Journal
that, after several visits, "They're well past [wireless] networking 101,
201 or 301 [and are now] in a master's class."

With AT&T's help, Apple designers have reportedly learned how to minimize
the load on the network created by performing simple tasks such as checking for
text messages.

The pressure on AT&T to improve its offerings and keep customers happy has
increased with the speculation that rival Verizon Wireless will roll out a CDMA
(Code Division Multiple Access)-based iPhone as soon as AT&T's U.S.
exclusivity contract with Apple-which it has held since the iPhone's debut in
2007-expires.

While Verizon has 91.2 million customers it could potentially interest in an
iPhone, AT&T's fear is more likely an exodus of its own customers to the
Verizon network, once those two-year contracts run out.

In December, AT&T set up a 100-day plan to improve network performance in
densely populated areas, the Journal reported, and in 2010 the carrier plans to
spend $2 billion on extending its network. Executives also pointed out that
they've been through a long learning curve with the iPhone, which no other
network has even begun.

"AT&T does have years of experience with this level of data traffic,
so that's good for them," analyst Roger Kay, with Endpoint Technologies,
told eWEEK. "And certainly Verizon has plenty of data traffic, but dealing
with the shape of iPhone traffic, and the mix of data types, there's probably a
footprint specific to each device [that it'll have to adjust to]."

While something as simple as better call quality in certain areas could lead an
AT&T customer to jump to Verizon, it's too early to predict a large-scale
defection.

"It's all still in motion," Kay said, explaining that in the many
months sure to pass before any Verizon iPhone arrival, AT&T will be hard at
work ramping up its network.

"There's some time in the runoff for AT&T to make a bid back for its
customers' approval," Kay said. "Which is good for the customers,
because they care about us and want to please us, which they maybe didn't quite
as much before there was some competition."

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.